When Spanish Comes in Handy


By Tom Turba

n 1992 I took a group of Scouts to the Boy Scout Sea Base in the Florida Keys. We were out on a double-masted schooner. The first night out we listened to the radio and heard about a coming storm - Hurricane Andrew.

The captain appeared calm and said that every crew he had that summer had a unique experience while on the boat. The last crew had picked up Cuban rafters, maybe Andrew would be ours. He was right.

We spent the week sailing, but came into a safe harbor the day before Andrew struck. The next day we evacuated the Keys and wound up in a hurricane shelter in Miami.

Being Scouts, we helped the Red Cross and other volunteers at the shelter. Many of the people at the shelter only spoke Spanish. The boys really thought it was neat that I could speak with the people.

Quite a few of the Spanish speaking people at the shelter asked me what country I was from and could hardly believe it when I told them I was from Minnesota. A number of the boys went on to study Spanish and become fluent in it.

When I took a group of Scouts to Bulgaria 1995 I discovered that a number of Scouts there had chosen Spanish as their second or third language. It was much easier to converse in Spanish than English or Bulgarian.

On a similar trip with Scouts to the Czech Republic 1996, we ran into a group of Scouts from Spain while sightseeing in Prague. I had a Scout shirt on, which had a Spanish interpreter badge on it. The Scouts from Spain spotted it and came over. We had a great time sharing experiences.

In 1999 the Scouting World Jamboree was held in Chile. I was on staff at the Boy Scouts of America booth in the Global Development Village as an interpreter. It was really a neat experience getting to talk with people from all over the Americas in their own language.

One of the most consistent uses of Spanish has been with Costa Rican Scouts. In 1989 the Indianhead Council in St. Paul started and exchange program with Costa Rica. In the winter we send Scouts there to work with sea turtles and do other conservation projects. In the summer, they come to Minnesota. I am the International Representative for the Council, and arrange these visits. Much of our communication is in Spanish. I have many friends in Costa Rica, and some of them speak virtually no English.

Last year we hosted Scouts from Argentina for the second time. In 2001, I had taken a group of Scouts to visit them in Argentina, and we will be doing it again in 2005, when they host the Pan American Jamboree.

Spanish has really been an asset that has opened many doors to other peoples and cultures.


* Tom Turba is a 1965 Spanish DLI graduate. He visited DLI on March 13, 2003 with his old classmates. After DLI he worked at Guantanamo naval base for one year, served at the National Security Agency, and exited the Navy in 1968. He earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in computer science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He currently works for Univac (formerly Sperry Rand and Unisys) and is the International Representative for the Indianhead Council, Boy Scouts of America.